May 31, 2015
An
important op-ed article by former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin in the Washington
Post this week raises the point that repeatedly comes up in discussions
about the Middle East these days: Could the Islamic State win? And how could it
win?
His
analysis is that the Islamic State (ISIS) would effectively have “won” and
could remain with us for a long time if it consolidates its hold on its
territory in Syria-Iraq because a large ground force of troops is not mustered
to attack it; it surrounds or enters Baghdad; Iraq remains politically
disjointed; and Iran does not play a bigger role in defeating it. I doubt that
this scenario will play itself out, because when confronted with a strong
combination of Arab, Iranian, and Western military forces on the ground and in
the air, which I expect to happen in the year ahead, ISIS will be rolled back
and probably shattered. That’s actually the easy part.
The hard
part, which McLaughlin touches upon but does not fully address, is the parallel
political steps the Arab world must take to defeat ISIS and prevent any future
versions of such movements from plaguing our region. He notes two essential
actions among others to defeat ISIS. “First, we must render hollow the Islamic
State’s claim to a ‘caliphate’ by taking back substantial territory. Second, a
way must be found to achieve what has so far proved most elusive: an end to the
alienation of Sunni populations in Iraq and Syria, the most powerful engine of
attraction for Islamic State recruits. This latter goal would require a
combination of military pressure, suasion and diplomacy of heroic scale.”
He
touches exactly the core underlying reason why tens of thousands of Arabs have
either supported ISIS or have not opposed it when it rolled into their town, and
why we see occasional photographs of disgruntled citizens in Arab provincial
towns across the region raise the ISIS black flag in a show of defiance, or of
something else. That “something else” is the crucial sentiment that must be
analyzed, understood and acted upon by anyone who wishes seriously to defeat
ISIS and prevent its reappearance in mutated forms in the future. This requires
acknowledging the many bad things that repels young Arabs from their own
societies. Defeating ISIS by trying to interrupt its flow of recruits will not
work, as long as conditions in Arab societies remain so offensive and
distasteful that they push some of their own citizens to leave and join ISIS.
So ISIS is not just a wild, Jihadi cool fantasy ride for theological extremists.
It is a practical, attractive alternative to the lifelong poverty, misery,
alienation and humiliation that are the birthright of millions of newborn Arab
men and women every year.
McLaughlin
is absolutely correct to note, “The alienation of Sunni populations in Iraq and
Syria, the most powerful engine of attraction for Islamic State recruits.” An
even more widespread version of such alienation drives otherwise normal Arab
citizens to see ISIS as a viable alternative to their present life conditions. Those
thousands of young men from many Arab countries that join ISIS and engage in
its criminal activities are the shredded shirts, broken bottles and rotting
food of the Arab garbage heap of modern citizenship that has built up over the
last half century or so of domestic Arab governance systems that have been, to
a large extent, incompetent, inequitable, corrupt, or brutal, and almost
totally devoid of credible political and human rights.
We know
from polls over the past decade that nearly half of all young people in the
poorer Arab states see their government institutions as lacking credibility or
even legitimacy, but most of them do not join ISIS or undertake an equally
desperate action. The bottom line is that so many of these people see ISIS as a
viable, if desperate, last alternative to their current life—or at least they
use ISIS as a means of taunting and challenging their governments. ISIS offers
them, in their perceptions, everything that they lack in their lives today—order,
moral certitude, righteous living, a sense of community, a job, empowerment,
basic rights, reliable access to basic human services and needs, social justice
and equitable treatment of all citizens, and a higher purpose in life.
That ISIS
in the eyes of its adherents is an attractive alternative to existing Arab
systems is the latest red flag warning sign that those Arab systems need
radical reforms and wholesale restructuring. Achieving integrated social,
economic and political restructuring of Arab societies is a critical
requirement—but it is also very difficult, takes years to achieve, and clearly
is beyond the capacity of all existing Arab regimes and power structures. The
longer we wait to walk down this road, the more difficult it will be to do
this, and the more entrenched and popular ISIS will become.
Rami G. Khouri is
published twice weekly in the Daily Star. He was founding director and now senior policy fellow of
the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the
American University of Beirut. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.
Copyright ©2015 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by Agence Global